Truma issue - help diagnosis please (1 Viewer)

[starquake]

Hi we've got a Truma Inet controlpanelled 4e I think it is unit.

Last night when preheating I was measuring the leccy use after finding it quite slow to heat on a previous trip the water....
Peak current draw of 1kw to the van pretty much, so it's only using one element. It was a chilly cold 4 celcisu, and set point was 20 so it should have used 2kw.

Is there anything I should check or just assume an element has gone? Full reboot of the unit on the 12V and 240V? (Yes it's set to use 2kw).

 

[CAB96]

No response?

How did you get on.

 

[starquake]

Relucatant to take it apart when we're in van 7 out of next 10 days so sticking on gas.
Plan to check all the fuses on the board and check the element resistances with power off Monday week...

 

[Pausim]

It sounds like one of your elements has burnt out if the maximum draw was only 1kW. Even at 2kW the heating might struggle to achieve 20°C with an outside temperature of 4°C. The water and heating share the same heating chambers and if you have the heating on it will draw the heat out of the hot water. If I want hot water I either use the boost setting or turn the heating off.

You are better off using gas which on a 4E is 4kW. The electrical elements are only 900W each and the boiler is designed primarily as a gas heater, the E function is an option aimed mostly at the UK market.

 

[starquake]

It sounds like one of your elements has burnt out if the maximum draw was only 1kW. Even at 2kW the heating might struggle to achieve 20°C with an outside temperature of 4°C. The water and heating share the same heating chambers and if you have the heating on it will draw the heat out of the hot water. If I want hot water I either use the boost setting or turn the heating off.

You are better off using gas which on a 4E is 4kW. The electrical elements are only 900W each and the boiler is designed primarily as a gas heater, the E function is an option aimed mostly at the UK market.

Yeah that was our thoughts, and being off grid next week makes no odds as we'll be on gas anyhow. But based on camping at "cold" temperatures in Jan/Feb on gas, it's also quite hungry on gas. Having investigated the element repair pricing, it's probably better to do the gaslow upgrade I suspect in short term to allow us "more" gas and not have to worry about using heat on gas and the consumption of it.

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[meanders]

We have a standard 4 so no leccy, but find gas usage even when very cold quite good. We were away one Christmas and then straight to New Year at Shrewsbury with snow on the between the two. I didn't fill up with gas between and left the heating on 5 degrees all the time when not heating higher as I didn't want tanks freezing. Also cooked in the van. We have two 11Kg GasIT and if I remember rightly still had about half a cylinder left.

 

[starquake]

We have a standard 4 so no leccy, but find gas usage even when very cold quite good. We were away one Christmas and then straight to New Year at Shrewsbury with snow on the between the two. I didn't fill up with gas between and left the heating on 5 degrees all the time when not heating higher as I didn't want tanks freezing. Also cooked in the van. We have two 11Kg GasIT and if I remember rightly still had about half a cylinder left.

Yeah, our issue is the fact we have 2x6kg, and we know from past off-grid experience that camping in winter kills a tank in ~ 4 days if we keeping the van warm at 0 to -5 ish...

We'll just speed up getting Gaslow (2x11kg) installed like you, as overall it's cheaper than us paying for the electrical element replacement. This year Christmas to New Year was all on EHU and we still managed to use what was left of the summer 6kg and the winter "spare" between Dec1str and Jan 31st, but we were living in the van nearly full time for 3 weeks. (so we used 6kg in 3 weeks without heat being involved). Given a new element is £150 + a decent amount for fitting, it's cheaper to just add 22kg of gas tanks and stick with gas.